PDNPulsehttps://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com
A professional photography blog by the editors of Photo District NewsTue, 26 Sep 2017 18:28:30 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.2Andrea Grützner Wins $11.8K ING Unseen Talent Awardhttps://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/andrea-grutzner-wins-13k-ing-unseen-talent-award.html
https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/andrea-grutzner-wins-13k-ing-unseen-talent-award.html#respondMon, 25 Sep 2017 22:07:11 +0000https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/?p=18094German photographer Andrea Grützner has been awarded the €10,000 ($11,848.50 USD) Jury Prize of the 2017 ING Unseen Talent Award. Robin Lopvet has won the Public Prize, which comes with a commission to create new work for the ING Collection. The three finalists for the awards are Belgium photographer Tom Callemin, UK-based photographer Alexandra Lethbridge...

]]>German photographer Andrea Grützner has been awarded the €10,000 ($11,848.50 USD) Jury Prize of the 2017 ING Unseen Talent Award. Robin Lopvet has won the Public Prize, which comes with a commission to create new work for the ING Collection. The three finalists for the awards are Belgium photographer Tom Callemin, UK-based photographer Alexandra Lethbridge and Austrian photographer Stefanie Moshammer.

Grützner won for her series “Hive,” which explores how architecture can act as a metaphor for orientation or alienation. Lopvet, the Public Prize winner was chosen by the public in an online poll. He won for his work “Économie de marché” (Market Economy), a digital collage that depicts the food waste from a French market.

The jury for this year’s prizes consisted of Maryam Eisler, photographer, co-chair of Tate’s MENAAC and Unseen Ambassador; Francis Hodgson, photography professor at the University of Brighton and founder of Prix Pictet; Dana Lixenberg, photographer; Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger, professor of exhibition studies and spatiality at University of Arts Helsinki; and Darius Sanai, editor in chief of Condé Nast International.

The competition, which began in 2013, is run in partnership between the global financial institution ING and Unseen, a platform for emerging photographers to showcase their work. The theme for this year’s competition was “Common Ground,” which encouraged photographers to explore “similarities amongst differences,” according to Unseen. “This year’s submissions touched on global issues including gender, consumerism, cultural diversity and communication. The artists proved that the medium of photography can convey a range of perspectives surrounding the theme,” the juries commented in a prepared statement.

Most of us likely think of drones as tools for making photos and videos. Cool, yes, but a tool nonetheless. For Jason Silva, they’re an extension of our mental scaffolding. Watch, and you’ll never look at your drone the same way again.

]]>https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/great-weekend-reads-photography-filmmaking-92317.html/feed0Scam Alert: Phishing Scheme Targets Freelance Photographershttps://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/scam-alert-phishing-scheme-targets-freelance-photographers.html
https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/scam-alert-phishing-scheme-targets-freelance-photographers.html#respondThu, 21 Sep 2017 19:04:11 +0000https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/?p=18078A person falsely identifying himself as a fashion blogger for High Snobiety, the style and culture website, has been soliciting freelance photographers to rip them off in an apparent check-cashing scam. Going by the name of Alan Hurt, the individual has emailed a number of photographers offering them assignments that pay $2,000, including a $500...

]]>A person falsely identifying himself as a fashion blogger for High Snobiety, the style and culture website, has been soliciting freelance photographers to rip them off in an apparent check-cashing scam. Going by the name of Alan Hurt, the individual has emailed a number of photographers offering them assignments that pay $2,000, including a $500 advance.

Photographer Jesse Dittmar, for one, received the offer via email and notified High Snobiety. Editor Jeff Carvalho told Dittmar that Hurt does not work for High Snobiety, and that the solicitation Dittmar received “is some sort of scam.” Carvalho also told Dittmar that other photographers had inquired about the solicitation.

Dittmar explained via email, “it’s most likely a check-cashing scam, where presumedly Hurt would send us a bad check as an advance and then ask us to advance money to a (fake) modeling agency (or something similar).”

Hurt’s email to Dittmar indicated he’d found Dittmar’s work on PhotoServe. Last week, PhotoServe issued a warning about the scam to its members.

HypeBeast has also issued an alert about the same scam—or a similar one, warning that someone has been soliciting photographers for HypeBeast fashion shoots under false pretenses. “”The scammers have been issuing very convincing fake checks. By the time they bounce, the photographer has already shelled out money, which they pay to a fake account operated by the scammers,” HypeBeast attorney Jaime Wolf told PDN.

PDN corresponded with Hurt via email to inquire about details, at first without specifying the inquiry was from a journalist for a story. Hurt indicated that photographers are expected to pay talent and stylist expenses to an agency selected for them, not talent agencies of the photographers’ choosing.

After PDN told Hurt the inquiry was for a PDN story, and that High Snobiety said he was engaging in a scam, Hurt offered no further response.

Dittmar said of the Hurt’s scam: “If it was done well with better proof reading, and a more convincing pitch, it could certainly fool someone…[W]e at least responded [to the solicitation in its current form] before getting the confirmation from the client that this was fake.”

High Snobiety declined PDN’s request for an interview, but issued a statement through a spokesperson calling the scheme “a phishing scam aimed at soliciting cash from randomly selected photographers.”

The statement continued: “Highsnobiety Inc and Titel Media GmbH take cyber-security, phishing and the protection of personal data very seriously, and we have alerted authorities of this issue. Our apologies to anyone that has been affected. All official electronic correspondence from Highsnobiety should end with @highsnobiety.com. Please contact info[at]highsnobiety[.]com with any questions or if you believe that you have been targeted.”

]]>https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/scam-alert-phishing-scheme-targets-freelance-photographers.html/feed0Q&A: Yancey Richardson on Gender Diversity in the Art Worldhttps://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/qa-yancey-richardson-gender-diversity-art-world.html
https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/qa-yancey-richardson-gender-diversity-art-world.html#respondWed, 20 Sep 2017 17:17:43 +0000https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/?p=18076A study published this spring by The City University of New York’s Guttman College argued that the art world remains predominantly white and male. Nearly 70 percent of the artists represented at 45 prominent New York galleries were male, the study suggested. One exception to this trend is Yancey Richardson, who represents 18 women and...

]]>A study published this spring by The City University of New York’s Guttman College argued that the art world remains predominantly white and male. Nearly 70 percent of the artists represented at 45 prominent New York galleries were male, the study suggested.

One exception to this trend is Yancey Richardson, who represents 18 women and 25 men. The women on Richardson’s roster include Terry Evans, Lisa Kereszi, Laura Letinsky, Zanele Muholi, Mickalene Thomas and Bertien van Manen, who, as Richardson told PDN, sell just as well as her male artists. We interviewed Richardson as we researched the September Diversity Issue of PDN and asked her about representing women and whether or not collectors and curators display bias against women artists. Richardson also spoke about the challenges women face in the art world, about a younger generation of curators who are working to improve gender and racial diversity in museum collections, and about current opportunities for gallerists and curators to promote artists who may have been previously overlooked by a more white-male-centric art world of the past.

Photo District News: Women are still underrepresented on the rosters of New York art galleries. Your roster is more balanced between men and women artists, however. Is that by design?

Yancey Richardson: It happened organically. I really do not select my artists according to any kind of formulaic program. It is completely driven by my response to the work—the freshness of the ideas, the intellectual approach, the execution of the object. It just so happens that I have, I think, a really strong stable of women artists.

PDN: Is there a perception that collectors or curators favor male artists?

YR: I don’t think so. If anything, we sometimes run across either a collector who is specifically interested in collecting women artists, or museums that are trying to balance their collections. In the past say, two to five years, a younger generation of curators is coming into positions at museums and they’re assessing the collections. They’re seeing that they have a deficit of work by women, work by artists of color—that the work is not diversified, that they have all white male artists represented in the collection.

I have found that some curators are expressing interest in work, and then telling me subsequently that they are trying to build up that aspect of the collection—they’re looking for work by really strong female artists. But I by no means find that there’s a discriminatory attitude on the part of collectors against women artists where they’re dismissed in any way.

I don’t know if there’s some subtle discrimination on the part of collectors that I’m not recognizing, but I would say what we see for the most part is people coming in and just responding to the work. Our bestselling artist right now is a female artist. The bottom line is that my female artists sell as well as my male artists.

[The impression of bias] might be a holdover from some other time. I don’t know. I just don’t understand it. And we have these amazing women gallerists like Marian Goodman, who is extraordinary, or Sprüth Magers in Europe. I do feel that the art world is one where the female gallerists have really been able to make a mark.

PDN: Do you find that women curators are making more of an effort to support women artists?

YR: I can’t say that I’ve seen that there’s a particular sensitivity on the part of female curators to balance the collection that way versus their male counterparts.

PDN: There’s been a lot of discussion about women balancing career goals and family goals. How do you see that playing out in the art industry?

YR: I think that women have a particular hurdle because many women want to be mothers, and unless you are a mother you just cannot conceive of the amount of time and energy that goes into being a mother. It’s just different than being a father, it just is. That can really slow some of the female artists down and it’s just the reality of it. You can’t travel the way that you would [if you are a male artist]. Some artists [rely on travel to] make their work. It’s a very global [art] world now so [artists are] traveling to be at every exhibition, to give lectures all over the place, to participate in biennials, things like that. It’s hard to do that and do that other job [of being a mother], so that might undermine some women. It doesn’t mean they’re not making the same quality of work and it doesn’t mean that there isn’t appreciation of their work, they just can’t push their agenda forward in the same way. And I’m a mother, so I’m just speaking from experience.

PDN: Does gender diversity come up in your conversations with your gallerist colleagues?

YR: It doesn’t come up. I think if anything, one might have the opportunity to “rediscover” an extraordinary female artist from an earlier generation that’s been overlooked. As I’m thinking out loud, and I’ve not had this thought before, that there’s probably a real opportunity there. Like Carol Lee Schneeman. She won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale this year. She’s an artist that’s been around making work for a long time, but nobody was really doing that much with her until first P.P.O.W. and then P.P.O.W. in collaboration with Gallery LeLong. Or say Barbara Kasten, who was rediscovered as a hero of all these younger artists doing studio-based work along the lines of abstraction. I could go on and on with examples.

One of the things that is going on is that people are looking for these artists that have been previously overlooked, and I think a chunk of them are women. It was harder for them, and I’m not saying it’s easier now, but it might be a little easier now and people are more sensitive to artists that have been overlooked. There is also a huge interest right now in artists of color that have been making great work all along and just weren’t being looked at.

PDN: Is that interest coming in response to what collectors are asking about, or as a response to the zeitgeist?

YR: Part of it is the appetite maybe of the market and trying to break some fresh ground. I know as a dealer I’m certainly interested in younger artists, but sometimes they’re not so well-formed when they’re young, they need some time to clarify their ideas, strengthen their practice, right? So the other thing that can be interesting is an artist who has now got two or three or four decades of art making under their belt and maybe they were a maverick when they first came on the scene and then the spotlight shifted somewhere else or the zeitgeist shifted, and they’re still making their work and they’re still good.

]]>https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/qa-yancey-richardson-gender-diversity-art-world.html/feed0Four Photographers Honored in the 2017 Ian Parry Scholarship Awardhttps://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/2017-ian-parry-scholarship-award-winners.html
https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/2017-ian-parry-scholarship-award-winners.html#respondTue, 19 Sep 2017 17:45:43 +0000https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/?p=18053Sharafat Ali has won the 2017 Ian Parry Scholarship, the board of the scholarship program announced yesterday. Ali, who is based in Kashmir and covers conflict, politics, faith and daily life in the region, won the Award for Achievement for his work on anti-India protests in the region. Ali and three other finalists will receive cash awards of...

]]>Sharafat Ali has won the 2017 Ian Parry Scholarship, the board of the scholarship program announced yesterday. Ali, who is based in Kashmir and covers conflict, politics, faith and daily life in the region, won the Award for Achievement for his work on anti-India protests in the region.

Ali and three other finalists will receive cash awards of $3,500 to support their chosen projects. In addition to receiving a cash prize, Ali will be included on the final list of nominees for World Press Photo’s Joop Swart Masterclass, added to the roster of Reportage by Getty Images Emerging Talent, and have his work shown as part of The Incite Project.

Tafadzwa Ufumeli of Zimbabwe won the Award for Potential for his work documenting the clashes between anti-riot police and protestors in a suburb of Zimbabwe. In addition to the cash prize, Ufumeli will also receive a one-year personal mentorship with previous Ian Parry winner Simon Roberts.

The two other honorees are Adriana Loureiro Fernández, honored for her coverage of demonstrators in Venezuela, and Heba Khamis, selected for her documentation of breast ironing (a process that attempts to make prepubescent girls less sexual and more likely to complete an education) in Cameroon.

Named after the 24-year-old photojournalist Ian Parry, who died in 1989 while on assignment for The Sunday Times, the scholarship is given annually to students and/or emerging photojournalists of any age who are obtaining their full-time BA, MA or MFA (or graduates from the past year), as well as any photographer 24 years or younger.

Photojournalist and Ian Parry board member Tom Stoddart says, “The scholarship exists to find and support the very best young people striving to produce powerful, meaningful photojournalism in a ‘selfie’ obsessed world.”

]]>Getty Images has awarded grants of $10,000 each to five photographers to support personal documentary projects of “universal importance,” the photo agency announced on September 7. The editorial grant winners are:

“The projects selected explore a range of complex and thought-provoking subjects and we are thrilled…to support such talent as they continue to shed light on some of the most moving and significant moments of our time,” Getty Image VP of News Hugh Pinney said in a prepared statement.

The agency says the editorial grant winners were selected from 480 applications submitted by photographers from 75 countries. Jurors included Alice Gabriner, international photo editor at Time Magazine; photographer Damon Winter of The New York Times; Chelsea Matiash, photo editor at The Intercept; Thomas Simonetti, photo editor at The Washington Post; and Jean-Francois LeRoy, director of the Visa pour l’Image festival.

]]>https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/getty-announces-2017-editorial-grant-winners.html/feed0PDN Video: Natalie Keyssar on Sexism in the Photo Industryhttps://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/pdn-video-natalie-keyssar-sexism-photo-industry.html
https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/pdn-video-natalie-keyssar-sexism-photo-industry.html#respondMon, 18 Sep 2017 20:11:31 +0000https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/?p=18050 Photojournalist Natalie Keyssar discusses how women (and photographers of color) are denied the same opportunities as white men in the photo industry, and why that needs to change. “It robs everyone, including white men, of the ability to understand other perspectives. In such a terribly polarized country as we’re in today, lack of empathy...

Photojournalist Natalie Keyssar discusses how women (and photographers of color) are denied the same opportunities as white men in the photo industry, and why that needs to change. “It robs everyone, including white men, of the ability to understand other perspectives. In such a terribly polarized country as we’re in today, lack of empathy is a violent, destructive force that’s reinforced by a homogeny of perspective,” she says.

Keyssar talks about how she and others are helping younger women photographers stand up to discrimination. She discusses how to address bias and sexist behavior in a constructive way; how photo editors can help diversify the industry; and what men who support the cause of gender equality can do to help.

]]>https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/pdn-video-natalie-keyssar-sexism-photo-industry.html/feed0Photojournalist Covering Rohingya Crisis for GEO Detained by Bangladeshi Authoritieshttps://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/photojournalist-covering-rohingya-crisis-geo-detained-bangladeshi-authorities.html
https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/photojournalist-covering-rohingya-crisis-geo-detained-bangladeshi-authorities.html#respondFri, 15 Sep 2017 18:29:04 +0000https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/?p=18047Photographer Minzayar Oo, who was reporting on the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh on assignment for GEO magazine, was detained with his assistant Hkun Lat on September 7, according to Oo’s agency, Panos Pictures. The two men have been accused of espionage. Police say the journalists entered the country on tourist visas rather than journalist visas, and...

]]>Photographer Minzayar Oo, who was reporting on the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh on assignment for GEO magazine, was detained with his assistant Hkun Lat on September 7, according to Oo’s agency, Panos Pictures. The two men have been accused of espionage. Police say the journalists entered the country on tourist visas rather than journalist visas, and are charging the pair with “false impersonation” and providing false information, according to a report by the Daily Mail. Panos reports that Oo and Lat have been denied bail, and the agency has called on authorities to release both men immediately.

“Minzayar Oo and Hkun Lat were assigned by GEO magazine because of their professionalism and their journalistic integrity,” Panos said in a statement. “Minzayar Oo is an internationally renowned, award-winning photojournalist, whose work is published widely and has been recognized by some of the world’s most important journalism awards.”

Oo was in the Bangladeshi town of Cox’s Bazaar reporting on Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar since August to escape fighting between Myanmar’s military and Rohingya rebels. Human Rights Watch has called the Myanmar military’s actions against Rohingya Muslim communities ethnic cleansing, while the United Nations estimates that 270,000 Rohingya have fled Western Myanmar.

Digital cameras still take significantly better pictures than smartphones, but they’re painfully disconnected from the social networks where so much photography is shared and enjoyed. Here’s a feature that could help fix that.

]]>https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/great-weekend-reads-photography-filmmaking-91617.html/feed0No More Excuses: Diversify Launches Database of Photographers of Colorhttps://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/no-excuses-diversify-launches-database-photographers-color.html
https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/2017/09/no-excuses-diversify-launches-database-photographers-color.html#respondWed, 13 Sep 2017 20:43:49 +0000https://pdnpulse.pdnonline.com/?p=18028After five months of planning, Diversify Photo today launched a database of 340 photographers of color from around the U.S. Brent Lewis, senior photo editor at ESPN’s The Undefeated, told PDN in May that he and independent photo editor Andrea Wise had begun compiling the database to show photo editors, art buyers and other creatives...

]]>After five months of planning, Diversify Photo today launched a database of 340 photographers of color from around the U.S. Brent Lewis, senior photo editor at ESPN’s The Undefeated, told PDN in May that he and independent photo editor Andrea Wise had begun compiling the database to show photo editors, art buyers and other creatives who hire photographers “that there are a lot of talented people out there that they may not see, have the time to go looking for, or just don’t know where to begin to find.”

The website, Diversify.Photo, features photographers working in every genre. It includes documentary photographers such as Ruddy Roye, Andre Wagner, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn and Tasneem Alsultan; editorial photographers such as Jeffery Salter, Kwaku Alston, Ramona Rosales, Oriana Koren and Wayne Lawrence; fashion photographers such as Itaysha Jordan, Shaniqwa Jarvis and Natalie Gordon; and commercial photographers, including Kareem Black, Emiliano Granado and Marcus Smith; and such fine-art photographers as Juan Giraldo and Sheila Pree Bright.

Thumbnail photos link to each photographers’ website. Access to the full Diversify database, which includes photographers’ contact info, ethnicity, language fluency and areas of expertise, is available by emailing the organizers.

Lewis and Wise circulated calls for photographers who identify as people of color earlier this year, and sought assistance from several photo editors: Jehan Jillani, Jennifer Samuel and Elijah Walker of National Geographic; Dudley Brooks of The Washington Post; Michael Wichita of AARP; and former National Geographic photo editors Elizabeth Krist and Jessie Wender. They reviewed the photographers’ portfolios to select the 340 featured on the website, which was created with sponsorship from Visura.

In a post on The New York Times Lens blog today, Lewis says that the goal is “creating a place where people can come and see photographers of color, to know they are out there and they exist, and to provide editors with the ability to find people not in their circles.” Lewis says he plans to work with organizations such as Reclaim, a consortium of photo agencies working to make the media more inclusive and to diversify voices in the media.

Lewis will be speaking on the panel “Reclaiming Photography” at Photoville on September 16, along with others involved in Reclaim: Shahidul Alaim of Majority World, Daniella Zalcman of Women Photograph, Austen Merrell of the Everyday Projects, and photographer Tara Pixley. It’s free and open to the public.